YO, KIDS!

In a season full of fun, yesterday was one of the most enjoyable days we have at Fort Walla Walla Museum: Explorers Kid Camp. The day-camp is designed to promote hands-on engagement with aspects of the region's heritage, in this case related to Lewis & Clark and the Indian people they met in the mid-Columbia basin.

We had 66 kids enroll this year and it's a situation where 'the more,the merrier' applies ... up to a point. We do have a limited number of spots available, to ensure a small-group atmosphere. After registration first thing in the morning (8:30 am), the kids are divided into seven groups, each assigned an adult 'shepherd' to help make sure kids move to the right station, stay on task, don't poke their neighbors (too much), and so forth.

The activity stations are each led by qualified adults. This year we featured a bow-and-arrow safety activity led by the folks from Walla Walla's Martin Archery and the 'Drilling with the 1800s Military' was conducted by a couple of gents from the local chapter of the Washington National Guard. The other stations are led by elementary school teachers recruited by our Camp Director Marcie Anderson, herself an experienced 3rd grade teacher at Davis Elementary School in College Place.

We work hard at updating the camp each year, so that kids who are interested may participate in new activities throughout the three-year span of the camp's age acceptance (9-11, although we take some 8-year olds whose birthdays will happen soon enough to keep them from being too much younger than the older kids). That age factor isn't simply random. In this part of the world, Washington 4th-graders and Oregon 3rd graders school curriculae require them to learn about regional history. The camps, along with our admission-free school tour program, allows kids a good opportunity to get in touch with the heritage that is rightfully theirs ... whether their families have been here seven generations, or whether they moved to town yesterday.

One down, one to go. We have our Pioneer Kids Camp scheduled for July 21. Organized in like fashion, kids can get hands-on experience in a blacksmith shop, panning for 'gold,' and 'building a log cabin.' At day's end, they receive a certificate of achievement, ice cream, and a chance to meet historical Hudson's Bay Trader William McBean, as portrayed by Rich Monacelli. Kids get the official camp T-shirt, pizza lunch, and plenty of liquids throughout the day to ensure hydration. As with Explorers Camp, we'll have a nurse on the grounds to deal with whatever medical situations arise.

Construction update ... the vapor barrier was being applied as I rolled in this morning. the progress is incredible! I'm told that we'll see drywall in about three weeks.

Today's pics include several from Explorer's Kids Camp and today's vapor barrier installation. The vid is from the 'Drilling with the 1800s military' station. Cheers!

Kid Korner

I had a phone call early this morning from a young woman wondering about the Museum. She said she was a bit embarassed, but that they'd never been here before. That, I guess, means she lives here and has for awhile but has never been out to investigate the community's ... and her own ... heritage. Well, good for her for recognizing the need! I suspect she will be entertaining out of town guests and would like to do something worthwhile with them.

A problem for most heritage museums is a perception that exhibits, once in place, never change. Sigh ... we change our exhibits every year, sometimes more often; even displays that largely remain the same from one visit to the next often get updated. Artifacts on display now are rotated out for preservation purposes, but also to showcase other items in our collection. With more than 42,000 items in our collection, we can do this quite well ... visitors see about 4,000 - 6,000 items on any one trip.

Several years ago, the Museum undertook a year-long self-assessment to determine what people liked and disliked, what they wanted, and how we might go about providing for those wants and needs. Once we threw out the usual handful of "free candy!" and "dancing girls!" requests, the results were illuminating.

More hands-on activities for kids was among the chief requests. Your wish, our command. As we are now in Phase I of a three-phase construction project, one of the main things people will see when entering the Museum is a 'kids museum' interwoven throughout the whole. A three-foot tall cartoon 'Maury the Mule' will identify the hands-on stations. These will be positioned so that the next such station will be visible from the one a child is using.

My caller this morning will appreciate that ... she'll be bringing five kids under the age of 7!

Today's photos show the roof of the blockhouse for the entry ready to be hoisted into position and three aspects of 'Maury the Mule": Farmer Maury (in a wheat field across the road from the Museum), Soldier Maury (posing with Fort Walla Walla troops in downtown Walla Walla as they prepared to ship out during the Spanish-American War, ca. 1900), and Dapper Maury (in front of a 1908 version of our local Baker Boyer Bank).

Doin' it for the Kids

Construction continues apace today as the crew puts up the roof deck ... we're going to be indoors pretty soon!

Yesterday I wrote of school kids disembarking at the Museum. We get about 5,000 participants in our admission-free School Tour Program each year and another 2,500 who arrive with parents, grandparents, et al. We conder the Museum to be an adjunct to what goes on in classrooms all across the region, including public, private, and home schools. With some serious generosity from Boise, Inc.'s Wallula Mill, Blue Mountain Community Foundation, J.L. Stubblefield Trust, Bonnie Braden Trust, and the Pacific Power Foundation, we can offer tours of the Museum to schools without cost to them beyond bus drivers and gas. Not bad for your neighborhood non-profit heritage Museum!

Heritage is a shared experience providing a foundation on which to build for the future. By connecting children with their heritage, great things happen. Children gain a sense of place and belonging in their community and in the process their self-esteem grows. Heritage education helps children become fully integrated, productive members of society. Fort Walla Walla Museum supports the educational process and inspires children to learn more about their heritage.

Learning takes place on many levels in the life of a child. Schools perform exceptional work in many areas, but the difficulty of making history come alive for students can be both costly and logistically daunting. A school trip to Fort Walla Walla Museum can be particularly useful in supporting classroom-based assessments (CBA). Children can see and touch aspects of the past that books and lectures cannot address. Utilizing the Museum’s free Teacher’s Guide, teachers may prepare students for a visit and find activities in multiple disciplines for follow-up learning.

Through ongoing surveys of visiting students, the Museum has learned that 86% have never visited a museum before. Further, 82% want to return with their families. Beginning with the new Entrance, a ‘Kid’s Museum’ will be interwoven within the larger Museum. Children who can connect with the region’s past will feel a sense of belonging to their communities, develop healthy self-esteem, and become involved in something greater than themselves. Engaging, interactive, fun, and seamlessly educational hands-on stations children identify by spotting “Maury the Mule,” a friendly, cartoon graphic clad in overalls, red 'long-handles,' and straw hat signaling where children can get involved with the past.

Today's photos show the Museum's 'Maury the Mule' icon, the roof deck being built over the Grand Hall, and our wonderful Docent Vi Jones (left) and teacher Tamar Lundsen with students from Othello's Hiawatha School.

Here's to the Children!

Tomorrow's the BIG Day, the opening of our 42nd season of service from our location here in beautiful Fort Walla Walla park. We already have something approaching 2,000 participants booked for the admission-free school tour program this spring. The program is open to public, private, and home schools and is generously sponsored by Pacific Power Foundation;Boise, Inc's Wallula Mill; The Blue Mountain Area Foundation; the J.L. Stubblefield Trust; and the Bonnie Braden Trust.

Most years we get kids from across Washington and Oregon, as well as from Idaho. As school budgets have been strapped the past couple years, we've seen a bit of a decline in numbers, but the progam still averages more than 5,000 participants each year. Not a bad way to put kids in touch with their heritage!

Many schools that arrive at the Museum also manage to book a tour at Whitman Mission for the other half of their day. I'm told that many schools also take their students to either the Yakama Nation Museum or to Tamastastlikt Cultural Institute, the museum of The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. When they're through touring, the kids end up with a pretty good base of regional historical knowledge.

We enjoy being a part of the region's educational efforts. Kids who know of their heritage are far more capable of helping to lead our communities into the future. To that end, the past is just about our only road map into the future and we ignore it to our peril. It doesn't matter if your family has lived here for umpteen generations or if you just finished unloading the moving van, this is the region's heritage and now it's yours. Knowing it helps us cope with daily existence as well as helping to make a brighter tomorrow for us all.

These days, we interact with regional school kids only once or twice in their K-12 years. We'd like to make that five or six times. Our plans for the future include hirring an Education Coordinator so that we can do more outreach in the schools and have more things for kids while they're at the Museum. History class is too often a 'death match' between kids and the guy at the front of the class (and he'd win if it weren't for graduation!) ... I think it's all about people and that should make it all the time interesting.

So here's to the kids! Bring 'em to the Museum this week during Spring Break ... it's one of the best things parents can do for their kids.

Enjoy the photos ... I like the one of Walla Walla's Edison School with the kids near their busses, all waving.

Kids at the Museum

We love kids at Fort Walla Walla Museum! We have an admission-free School Tour Program that offers kids, their teachers, and schools an opportunity to walk through the past. Walla Walla wasn't always a sleepy little town at the end of the trail, but was something of a big deal, leading to the long-standing claim of 'Cradle of Northwest History.' The program attracts about, 5,000 participants each year and receives some generous corporate sponsorship from Boise, Inc.'s Wallula Mill, Pacific Power Foundation, and others.

We see lots of other young folks in the course of a year, too. From babies in backpacks, to toddlers in strollers, and schools kids all the way through their high school years, as well as some college students. Some of the latter have been among our most vibrant, active volunteers, putting the lie to "What's the matter with today's kids?" Well, not much in our view ... they are active in the community and already giving back of their own time. That makes us feel pretty good about the long-term prospects of preserving our heritage.

Today's blog is a salute to those wonderful young folks whose energy we envy and direction we try to quietly mentor. There may be problems in the world, but 'our' kids aren't among them. We think kids who make contact with their community's heritage are much better equipped to help make the decisions about a community's future.